Archive for August, 2009

In my last post I reviewed the things that make diminishes goodwill. In this blog I now review the areas that increase goodwill.

***Know the main things that people want to do on your site and make them obvious and easy

***Tell people what they want to know. Don’t hide shipping costs etc. A good example is http://www.dstore.com.au that advertises a flat $6.95 anywhere in Australia as a banner ad. A poor example is http://www.dymocks.com.au where you don’t know the postage until the end of the transaction.

***Save me steps whenever you can. Examples are a tracking number for the shipment order

***Make it easy to recover from errors. Assist customers so that they don’t make errors, but if they do then make it easy to fix them rather than having to restart.

***When in doubt apologise. You may have a clunky system and you can’t change it, let customers know that your system is far from perfect and apologise for it.

In Steve Krug’s book ‘Don’t Make Me Think’ (2nd Edition) he wrote about the things that diminish goodwill on a web site:

***Hiding the information that customers want such as postage rates, customer support, phone numbers and the like. Some companies do this so that they drive down costs in their business or customer self serve. Other do this due to internal politics, departmental policies or simply trying to increase the stickiness of getting a sale! Best practice is to be open, up front and transparent to the customer. Make it easy to find all information.

***Asking the customer to format data such as putting a dash or a space in credit card fields. Best practice is to allow the customer to enter the data as they want & then write a program to convert it into your system requirement.

***Asking for information that is not relevant. Don’t ask for marketing information if it isn’t relevant. Who has got fed up trying to set up an Amazon account. Keep it quick & punchy, then as you develop the relationship ask for more information & incentivise for it.

***Too much sizzle. Get rid of the long to load flash intros, no-one wants to see it.

However, there is another golden rule…if your customers actually like flash, like long sign up processes, want to key the data in the right format or like to search for information, then DON”T CHANGE IT. If it works for you and your customers and gets the results you need, then don’t change, but if you can get a better result through a test and learn phase then make the change towards better usability.

Web optimisation is about having a plan to take practical steps to change things so that they work better. This could include your registration process, email layouts, checkout and customer service follow up. It’s about a holistic approach to optimising your site and campaigns.

Some examples of optimisation are:

• Search engine optimisation (SEO) – mainly a marketing function, but Retail can influence this based upon sales stats and analytics
• Search engine marketing (SEM) – once again mainly a marketing function but Retail can have input via analytics to say which sites work best and which landing pages give a higher sales conversion percentage
• Behavioural targeting – tailoring the marketing message, up or cross sell opportunity based on the customers profile or what we know about that segment. An example would be an Accidental Damage offer if the customer had Home Insurance already. For this to work you need a segmentation model and if possible data about each individual customer and their preferences.
• Creative and messaging pre-testing optimisations – pre-testing optimisations on a small target group or for a few clicks to see the reaction. If successful then rollout to more customers, if not then cease and try something else!
• Site optimisation – checking the site regularly to ensure that all the links work and that there is nothing that is stopping a smooth flow for your customers. This is where you need to identify where shoppers leave your site & try to understand why
• Campaign performance optimisation – review the entire marketing campaign from search through to fulfilment to ensure that it works and get the highest conversion rates possible

Returning to our Analytics model optimisation is the final phase:

Phase 1 – The raw data

Phase 2 – KPIs (conversion rate)

Phase 3 – Measures
1. Conversion by new release/older version
2. Number of customers who also bought another product
3. Conversion by promotional offer such as free shipping

Phase 4 – Analytics
1. Effect on the landing page to conversion
2. Impact of product placement (merchandising) on the page
3. Impact of customer demographic and segmentation on the rate

The first part of analytics is to develop a unification plan to ensure that a customer has a continuous and seamless journey with the company. The customer should be at the focus of everything that we do – marketing offers should be tailored for each individual customer based upon their preferences and configuration.

So firstly we need to have a unification plan for each customer and this should be reviewed and updated regularly to ensure that it is working. This can be achieved by asking customers or by watching their behaviour while on your web site.

The next step is to develop a data plan. This has been covered in section 2. Work out what data you have available and then how you will report on it. Always measure against your objectives and KPIs.

The final step is to define your analytics plan inclusive of:

• Ensure that your KPIs are linked to your goals as defined in section 1.
• Established the various measures and the interval for measurement
• Determine whether you will do real time analytics and optimisation, making micro adjustments ‘on-the-go’.
• Analytics is then the study of the measures that have been selected. The purpose is to understand just what is happening to your measures and why.

Analytics is simply understanding cause and effect!

An example could be Adelaide UBD sales:

Phase 1 – The raw data

Phase 2 – KPIs (conversion rate)

Phase 3 – Measures
1. Conversion by new release/older version
2. Number of customers who also bought another product
3. Conversion by promotional offer such as free shipping

Phase 4 – Analytics
1. Effect on the landing page to conversion
2. Impact of product placement (merchandising) on the page
3. Impact of customer demographic and segmentation on the rate

I have developed a framework for the development of a retail web team. In this blog I have set the framework for how a retail team can operate in this environment and the activities that need to occur.

Inclusive in these reports will be all the measures of KPIs and Goals along with the web optimisation scorecard as detail in section 4.

3. Daily Activity

On a daily basis the web analyst should complete the following activities:

• Review the daily exception reporting, something that it occurring on the site that needs immediate action or change.
• Review customer transactions that could be intervened such as:
o Missing underwriting information
o Missing sales opportunity ie under insured as compared to other houses in the area
o Lost sale – vehicle was outside the underwriting guidelines
• Determine which transactions will be referred to the outbound team for immediate follow up
• Determine what transactions will receive an email direct mail piece suggesting another product, up sell offer or coupon
• Run the lists
• Review the conversion rates of each campaign
• Determine optimisation to increase the conversion rate and test and learn

On a weekly basis review:

• The web optimisation scorecard
• On the basis of these results determine action items and areas to test and learn for the coming week
• Identify products that are not performing to budget and increase optimisation in these areas
• Check for usability – if it is not simple people will exit the site, so suggest better flows and ways of flowing the customer through to the checkout process & fulfilment

On a monthly basis:

• Prepare a report on the web optimisation for the past month
• Identify wins and areas for increased focused
• Compile the scorecard and provide detailed reporting against the goals and KPIs
• Submit the report for management review

4. Reporting Tools

The reporting tools are yet to be determined. Retail does have access to the following information sources and resources:

Reporting Co-ordinator:
• Will develop the reporting framework
• Will co-ordinate the data sources to ensure a quick and uniform way to report and action work
• Creation of the reporting platform for web optimisation and monthly management reports

Data for the web analysts will be gathered from:
• Google analytics
• Web edit
• Other software as determine in consultation with Marketing

The important key is to ensure that each area reports in similar ways using the same data.

5. Roles and Responsibilities

Both Marketing and Retail have responsibilities to drive the success of the ecommerce activity:

While each area has specific roles and responsibilities to achieve a sales outcome will mean that a partnership between the functions is required. Providing feedback on the checkout process and an opportunity to increase sales conversion can only result in a change if the Marketing team agree and make the necessary changes. In requisite organisation language it means a TIRR responsibility.

To ensure success regular meetings between Marketing and Retail will need to be held as well as sharing information to ensure the best possible optimisation outcomes.

1. Long registrations – keep them short. Amazon’s process is too long and the Dymocks process means that even if you log in you need to re-enter all of your details!
2. No data plan – you need to plan your data and what you are going to do with it
3. Data but no analysis – there is no point in having data but then not having a plan of what to do with it. Remember the game is optimisation, not data collection
4. Going for gimmicks – there is a thought that gimmicks (like games) will increase stickiness, but it is short lived at best
5. Ignoring an awareness plan – You need a smart plan to build traffic to your site inclusive of SEM, SEO and other on and off line activity
6. Omitting search – you need to be a part of search, in all it’s forms – Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc etc etc
7. Poor usability – be customer obsessed and ensure that the site is usable for customers. Have a fast site that has no broken links and is easy for customers to find what they want and to check out in one page
8. Spamming – don’t do it
9. Failing to involve your participants – ask customers what they want, allow reviews, facilitate blogs, watch what they do and make changes to the site to make it better for them. Reduce brochureware! This is one-to-one marketing, not one-way marketing!
10. One size fit all DigiMarketing – Personalise your site, don’t make it mass marketing, make it customised to your consumers

In the next few blogs I will write about web Optimisation and Analytics. I have developed a 10 point plan that I believe makes good sense if you are setting up a web team to manage your e-commerce sites. My 10 step plan is: